Industrial and home refuse or garbage typically comprises several components or fractions which are worth reclaiming. In particular glass, ferrous and nonferrous metals, and paper and textile components are sufficiently valuable to justify their separation from the refuse. Systems proposed for such sorting typically use a hammer mill wherein the refuse is comminuted and reduced to chunks often no greater than 5 cm in any direction. The thus-comminuted refuse is then sorted by means of an immersion classifier having a body of water into which the comminuted refuse is dumped so that the heavier components -- glass, stone, metal -- sink and the lighter components -- paper, textiles, wood -- float. It is also known to use a so-called toss classifier which projects the comminuted refuse through the air with the heavier components being thrown further than the ligher components.
Such an arrangement has the considerable disadvantage that some of the potentially usable components of the refuse are so badly damaged by the comminution operation that their reclamation is not worthwhile. This is particularly the case for paper articles, as the paper is so shredded and saturated as to be virtually worthless. Furthermore many of the heavy constituents are often incompatible with each other, as much organic refuse is of a density comparable with desirable nonferrous constituents in the refuse.